Hi Ross,
Nice to see you in the discussion.
On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Ross Parlette wrote:
> In all the discussion of Challenge / Response I have not seen what I regard
> as the non-scaling flaw.
>> A long time ago, I read that one should conduct one's life in such a way
> that if many (or all?) others did likewise, disaster would not result.
Oh yes! I do my best to behave like this. In fact I try to live my
life in such a way that if all did likewise, our earth would be saved.
It's very hard to know how to do that though.
> Perhaps my analysis is in error, but I believe that C/R fails here.
Ah ha. See below.
>> Now I currently get my BayPiggies mail via the daily summary, so all mail is
> from baypiggies-request at python dot org. I changed over to this because
> the mailing list was flooding my inbox and my pathetic mail system does not
> have good means for handling this.
>> But prior to this, I received individual messages, which served before the
> discussions of name-change and similar topics produced a plethora of mail. I
> have looked back at those messages and they did not come from baypiggies dot
> org, but appeared to come from people like Aahz, Donna Snow, w chun, etc.
> Presumably these were spoofed by the forwarder (note discussion of SPF).
Here are some important headers from your mail:
Return-path: <baypiggies-bounces at python.org>
Precedence: list
Absolutely from a list! So no challenge is sent.
There's also this:
From: "Ross Parlette" <ross at pcnt.com>
To: "BayPiggies" <baypiggies at python.org>
Whenever the To: header doesn't have my address, it is either bulk
mail, or mail that is forwarded from an alias. So that is also bulk
mail.
Sometimes there's:
To: "BayPiggies" <baypiggies at python.org>, marilyn at deliberate.com
so having my address in the To: header isn't enough to know it's
personal, but not having my address in the To: is sufficient to know
it is bulk.
So, there is no good excuse for a C/R system to send a challenge in
response to bulk mail.
It is the same problem with vacation messages. They must not be sent
in response to bulk mail, but some broken ones do.
I hope this answers your question.
Note that you did not get a challenge. But, assuming we haven't
written each other previously, if you send me, not the list, a little
test message, you can see the challenge.
Marilyn
>> Now consider what would happen if all on a Sunday, 90% of the members of the
> list were to adopt a C/R system. At the time I was receiving individual
> messages, I did not reply to the individuals, but rather to the list (as
> Aahz has indicated it the proper thing to do), so by default the members of
> the list would not go on my white list thereby. However, those fools who
> posted to the list would be met by a flurry of C/R from everyone else on the
> list (who had C/R) and this would happen to every person who posted (at
> least once; I'm not sure I understand the full panoply of C/R options). As
> new persons joined the list or added C/R to their e-mail program, a new
> bucket of C/R would flow across the net.
>> Consider also that the BP list is not primarily used for "Can you, in
> particular, help me out with this specific task?" Rather is seems to be
> (when working properly, not something I have seen a lot of lately) an area
> for persuasion and encouragement.
>> Sorry that I don't have 25 prior messages and sigs embedded in this letter,
> but I hope you all can overlook that.
>> Ross
>> At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar.
>>
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